Xbox 360 designed to be unhackable

The Xbox 360 purportedly sports levels of security that the hacker community …

We'd all be pretty surprised if Microsoft came out and claimed that they were designing the Xbox 360 to be as hackable as possible, because it doesn't fit the company's image. Likewise, it would be a little silly to act shocked that the company is planning, in fact, to lock down the Xbox 360 in as many ways as possible. In fact, it's not too surprising given the fact that Microsoft is going to technologically lock out unlicensed accessories for the new console.

Chris Satchell from the Xbox Advanced Technology Group told the BBC that the console was designed from the ground-up to be as secure as possible.

"One of the reasons we went with custom hardware design for all our silicon is that it allows us to build security at the silicon level," he said. "There are going to be levels of security in this box that the hacker community has never seen before," but he admitted that "I'm sure sooner or later someone will work out how to circumvent security. But the way we have done the design doesn't mean that it will work on somebody else's machine."

While many feel that Microsoft is trying too hard to be a killjoy, the company's position is that hackable hardware enables piracy, and makes the platform less desirable to developers.

The original Xbox was hacked silly, and more than one person bought the console just to have a cheap Linux box that could be used for any number of media functions. Microsoft, however, isn't interested in selling its console hardware below cost for the sake of hackers. Will the Xbox 360 be hacked? It's a question of interest: if enough people want to see it happen, it probably will.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.